IMCA's first Advanced Investment Strategist Institute will be taking place on 13-14 June, 2016 in Toronto. Speakers include academics and practitioners who will force you to take a closer look at your practice and make you think more deeply about how you advise your clients.

Lionel Martellini, Director of EDHEC-Risk Institute and Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School, will be speaking at the event on the theme " Goals-Based Investing: From Investment Products to Investment Solutions". Individual and institutional investors need investment solutions that help them meet their goals subject to dollar and risk-budget constraints. The investment industry needs to evolve beyond standard product-based, market-centered approaches and to start providing both institutions and individuals with meaningful investor-centric investment solutions. In this masterclass, Lionel Martellini will introduce participants to the modern financial-engineering and risk-management techniques that will allow a new breed of investment managers and consultants to design and implement innovative forms of welfare-improving investment solutions for clients. He will showcase how the emergence of these new forms of investment solutions is a profound paradigm change that will disrupt the wealth management industry, where existing practices still rely on costly attempts at summarizing investors’ preferences in terms of risk-aversion (balanced funds), time-horizon (target-date funds), or capital guarantee (structured products). Combining academic expertise and industry experience, Professor Martellini strikes a balance between exploring new investment approaches and analyzing practical applications, including integrative case studies that provide step-by-step implementation examples.

Lionel Martellini is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School, Director of EDHEC-Risk Institute and Senior Scientific Advisor for ERI Scientific Beta. Lionel holds Master’s Degrees in Business Administration, Economics, Statistics and Mathematics, as well as a PhD in Finance from the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He is a former member of the faculty at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, and has been a visiting fellow at the Operations Research and Financial Engineering department at Princeton University. Lionel is a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Journal of Alternative Investments, and The Journal of Retirement. He conducts active research in a broad range of topics including long-term asset allocation decisions, equity and fixed-income portfolio construction, risk management and derivatives valuation. His work has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals and has been featured in major European and global dailies such as The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has co-authored reference textbooks on topics related to Alternative Investment Strategies and Fixed-Income Securities. Lionel has served as a consultant for institutional investors, investments banks and asset management firms on a number of questions related to risk and asset allocation decisions, and is a regular speaker in seminars and conferences on these subjects.